HOT IN THE CITY TONIGHT

So the summer is drawing to a close, which means that all my neighbours’ antics of baby torturing, dog abusing, reggaeton and trap blaring, screaming blue murder, hammering and drilling, pigeon-feeding racist ranting and violin practising will no longer be on public display as the heat once again becomes bearable and people start closing their windows.

It’s the same every summer: once the real heat arrives, and temperatures hit the 30s and beyond, the madness in my neighbourhood begins. But it is a very public madness, because in the narrow Sant Gervasi street where I live, when people open their windows wide, everyone else becomes privy to every small detail of their lives. From babies and pets struggling to cope with the heat (for the love of God, someone do something to stop all the dogs from barking!), to the tensions of fraught relationships suffering in the heat, my neighbours’ decision to start doing all that industrial refurbishing work on their flat, the elderly Basque woman who lives across the street from me feeding the multitude of cooing (and crapping) pigeons on and above her windowsill while issuing racist curses in Spanish to anyone who will listen – some of us have no choice, to the would-be Sherlock Holmes screeching away on the violin at all hours, there is no shortage of candidates to disturb my peace during the summer months.

In an ideal world, I would pack up and leave like many of my fellow local residents, heading for my beachside/lakeside/mountain country house, cabin, caravan… but as a guiri who arrived here with few resources some 30 years ago, I have never been able to afford a second residence in the summer, and even less so now with the way prices have rocketed in recent years.

In a bid to change my summer fortunes, I have recently determined to move out of the city in the near future and look for a quiet place to live nearer nature, so I will no longer have to tolerate the guy who uses my street as a workshop to cut ceramics with a power saw, unruly and thoroughly disrespectful French Airbnb tourist neighbours, TV addicts who blare their mindless programmes out at all times of the night and day… you didn’t think that initial list I made at the beginning of this column was exhaustive did you? Oh no, there are plenty more where that came from. And I always find it hard to believe that in a city so clearly civic-minded as Barcelona so many people have little compunction at sharing their dreadful noises with those unlucky enough to live within earshot.

All that being said, there is one exception to this dreadful state of affairs. When I do eventually up sticks and leave the neighbourhood, I will miss my local opera singer and blues pianist neighbours, who make my summer more bearable with their beautiful music. I have a “one in ten” theory that fits pretty much everything – an example would be that one in ten taxi drivers can actually drive safely, or one in ten people will show some courtesy and let you pass when you come face to face in a doorway. And my professional musician neighbours are the one in ten who don’t make my life a misery when the summer comes round, so let this be my expression of thanks to them, rather than a moan about city summer life.

Opinion